Wednesday, October 25, 2017

For Those of You That Think Revolution is Always a Good Thing....

On October 25, 1917, the precursor to the Communist Party in Russia launched a 24-hour revolution against the revolutionary government of socialist Alexander Kerensky. This became known as the October Revolution in order to distinguish it from the revolution that had overthrown the Czar the previous February. In the October Revolution, two people were killed while the revolutionaries were capturing the Winter Palace, where the Provisional Government met. By the evening of October 26, it was clear just how provisional the government had been.

On August 21, 1991, eight leaders of the tattered remnants of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union launched a coup against the government of Communist Mikhail Gorbachev. They had placed him under house arrest at his dacha 900 miles away. Boris Yeltsin was visibly in charge of the existing government at what was known as the White House: the parliament building. The Communists sent in troops to remove him and his supporters. Thousands of citizens then lined up to resist the troops. The troops refused to fire on them. That ended the Communist Party’s power. Three civilians were killed by armored personnel carriers.

A total of five people were killed at the beginning and the end of the Bolshevik revolution. In between, Lenin and Stalin (mainly Stalin) executed or starved at least 15 million people, according to the 2007 edition of Robert Conquest’s 1968 book, The Great Terror. Conquest had initially estimated 20 million. We will never know for sure, he said in 2007.

Out of the Bolshevik Revolution came the Chinese Communist revolution under Mao. There were more: North Vietnam, North Korea, Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge, Cuba, Albania, and the Soviet satellite nations in central and eastern Europe. The grand total of those who died under Communist tyranny was between 85 million and 100 million, as reported by The Black Book of Communism (1997). This may have been as high as 150 million.

Without Lenin, there would not have been Hitler. Hitler positioned his National Socialist German Worker’s Party as the only reliable bulwark against Bolshevism. Add another 60 million for World War II.

Unless the replacement on one government is to be replaced with a government that is moving in the direction of freedom, revolution, separatism. populist revolt, etc. can be a very dangerous thing.

15 comments:

Lol, there is a difference between peaceful secession/separation and overthrowing the existing government. As far as I can tell, the Catalans don't want to take over Madrid, but be left alone - same as the American colonies, same as the South et al.

What do you mean exactly by "be left alone"? The Catalans secessionists appear to want to create another socialist state...the kind that murders their neighnors. So I equate someone saying they want socialist rule with the reality that this really means wide-spread state murder.

Do you think your neighbor wanting to murder you is the same as them wanting the "be left alone"?

This just made me think further on Robert's Rules of secession. Knowing the Union didn't fight to end slavery but in the end that was the practical effect, the US crushing the Confederacy through force did move millions of slaves toward actual freedom and liberty. Robert, please analyze Confederate secession based on this.

Personally, I believe slavery would have ended peacefully even in a CSA, as evidenced by it ending peacefully nearly everywhere else. But it certainly ended much sooner than otherwise.

I'd like to echo Veterans for Peace's request for an analysis for the CSA. I personally think that if the CSA was allowed to exist economics would've forced them to end slavery, alternatively abolitionists in both the CSA and US would start buying slaves in order to free them.

VPI, isn't that just some sort of amoral numbers game you're playing? X number of slaves freed vs. Y number of soldiers and civilians killed/maimed = secession justified or not. I don't see how starting a war that led to all of that death and injury can ever be justified for "the greater good." From the libertarian perspective of self-ownership and the NAP, the war was wrong and slavery was wrong. The act of peaceful secession was not, and can never be, wrong (although of course the rule of those in the Union and CSA without their individual consent always remains a wrong).

I think Dr. North is severely understating the deaths from Stalin and Lenin. My understanding was that the terror starvation and collectivization in the early 30s alone killed around 12-15 million. And that was only in the span of a few years! This is from Conquest's book 'The Harvest of Sorrow'.

Also true, Russian involvement in the war wasn't popular from the start, the more it dragged more discontent got sowed. In addition what would the Middle East look like if the UK and France decided to take the Ottoman's offer on alliance instead of defaulting to Germany.

Calexit would decrease the US empire's tax base. Catalan going solo similarly decreases the amount of territory Spain controls. And it gives other secessionist movements hope. I was skeptical of Scotland's attempt (because they are so socialist, so it would be a net increase in socialism in the world, maybe), but the argument that now a world power has a smaller territory is a pretty good one. Would Scotland be making fighter jets and going into Iraq?